KARACHI - The Sindh Assembly on Wednesday asked the federal government to expel Norwegian
ambassador to register its protest against an attempt of the Holy Quran’s desecration by an Islamophobic group in the latter’s city of Kristians.A bunch of identical resolutions
tabled by Mujeeb-ul-Huq of Pakistan People’s Party, Saeed Ahmed of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Syed Abdul Rasheed
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Adeel Shahzad of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s Mufti Muhammad Qasim and Sarwat Fatima. Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani however clubbed al the resolution as they were on same issue.Speaking on the resolution, Fatima said that Muslims were being targeted under the garb of freedom of expression in the Western and European world. “Every other terror incident is linked with Islam but we never linked any other religion with terrorism,” she added.The MMA’s Syed Abdul Rasheed
said Norwegian incident reflected that Europe and Western
world face Islamophobia. “Unlike other countries, minorities
in Pakistan have equal rights as we are following the teachings of Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him),” he added. Rasheed
also demanded of the federal government to close Norwegian embassy and expel its ambassador.The PTI’s Saeed Ahmed urged that the legislation at international level should be made to hinder the way of such incident. He stated that such incident
would not go on to help the inter-religion harmony.Sindh Minister for Religious
Affairs Syed Nasir Hussain
Shah hailed Umar Ilyas, a young man who stopped the desecration of the Holy Quran. “Umar has set an example of bravery for the sanctity of the Holy Quran,” the minister said.The clubbed resolution was passed unanimously.Earlier, the Information Minister
Saeed Ghani said that the provincial government had released
first installment of dues of the media houses on the condition that they would also release salaries of their employees.
He was giving a statement
under rule 261 after the journalist staged a protest in press gallery on the demise of SM Irfan who was the reporter at private news channel and deprived
of his salary for the last six months. “The second installment
of payments would not be paid to all those media houses which had yet not paid salaries to their employees,” he warned.Ghani was of the view that the problem of journalists’ sacking from their jobs as well as of undue delay in payment of their salaries across the country had arisen in the last seven to eight months. “The main reason for this particular suffering of the journalists was the federal government’s failed economic policies,” he added.Furnishing replies to lawmakers’
written and verbal queries during the Question Hour, Ghnai said advertisements
to all the newspapers were being issued from the Information Department in accordance with the Advertisement
Policy, 2015, and the impression that the advertisements
were being issued to only a particular media group was absolutely baseless.The minister informed the house that at present, 737 newspapers and magazines were being published in Sindh province, which included 446 Urdu newspapers and magazines
and 156 Sindhi newspapers
and magazines. He added it was not possible to release advertisements to all the newspapers daily, but the information
department tried to ensure that the advertisements were being issued to small and regional publications along with the big media houses so as to ensure that they also sustained their publications. “At present, the Information Department was releasing advertisements
to more than 200 newspapers,” he added.Responding to a question, Ghani said that proceedings against dummy newspapers were underway and that the letters for cancellation of declaration of 74 dummy newspapers had been sent to the concerned Deputy